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Too Far To Care

Too Far To Care

The Old 97's are an alternative country/rock band from Dallas, Texas formed in 1993.

They are recognized as pioneers of the alt-country movement during the mid to late 90s along with bands such as Uncle Tupelo, Drive-By Truckers, Whiskeytown, The Jayhawks, and The Bottle Rockets.

Too Far To Care is the third studio album by the band, originally released in 1997. The album's title comes from the song Streets of Where I'm From.

Lyrically the band's constant touring is evident in songs like Barrier Reef (with references to Chicago), Broadway (in New York City), and Niteclub (inspired, according to the band, by clubs in Cleveland, Ohio and Ann Arbor, Michigan).

Four Leaf Clover was originally recorded on Hitchhike To Rhome, the first Old 97's album. Rhett (vocals/guitar) was searching for a duet to record with friend Exene Cervenka and had started work on an old-fashioned duet that I thought we might sing, but Exene proclaimed it 'too pretty'. That song later became Fireflies. Instead, Exene sang on Four Leaf Clover, replacing the lyric nothing to impress you with nothing to attract you which Rhett found much sexier.

Graveyard Whistling (Red)

In 1996, the Old 97 s recorded Too Far to Care. It was their major-label debut after the band signed with Elektra Records. But rather than venture into some state-of-the-art studio in New York or LA, the band decamped to Village Productions in Tornillo, Texas, a remote facility in the middle of two thousand acres of pecan trees near the Mexican border. The sound that the group captured on Too Far to Care has remained a touchstone for them. We ve always held that one up as the closest to sounding exactly like what sets us apart from the rest of the world, says Rhett Miller. And so when it came time for the Old 97 s to record the follow-up to the highest-charting album of their career, 2014 s Most Messed Up, producer Vance Powell brought up the idea of returning to Tornillo. We knew instantly that it was the perfect move, says Miller. The result is the eleven songs of Graveyard Whistling, the eleventh studio album from the Old 97 s.

Knowing that he wanted to consider as many options as possible, Miller handed over a huge pile of songs to the band; they whittled his thirty selections down to eleven. It grapples with spirituality and mortality, Rhett says. Our songs normally hide deeper meanings in the subtext, but they re more on the surface for this record. The trick the Old 97 s have held on to is to take a song that may have a darker theme and present it as something to be screamed along to in a club. The emotional range and musical scope of Graveyard Whistling also benefits from the contributions of some remarkable co-writers including Brandi Carlile, Caitlin Rose, Nicole Atkins, and Butch Walker.

There aren't more than a handful of bands in history who can claim to have an intact, unchanged line-up as they approach twenty-five years together. There is, of course, no real blueprint or rulebook for sustaining the kind of chemistry that Miller, Bethea, Hammond, and Peeples enjoy. We re just very lucky to be able to do this for a living. It's insane and beautiful and we never, ever take it for granted concludes Rhett.

1. I Don't Wanna Die In This Town 2. Bad Luck Charm3. All Who Wander4. Jesus Loves You5. Good With God6. She Hates Everybody7. Irish Whiskey Pretty Girls8. Nobody9. Drinkin' Song10. Turns Out I'm Trouble11. Those Were The Days

Graveyard Whistling (Green)

In 1996, the Old 97 s recorded Too Far to Care. It was their major-label debut after the band signed with Elektra Records. But rather than venture into some state-of-the-art studio in New York or LA, the band decamped to Village Productions in Tornillo, Texas, a remote facility in the middle of two thousand acres of pecan trees near the Mexican border. The sound that the group captured on Too Far to Care has remained a touchstone for them. We ve always held that one up as the closest to sounding exactly like what sets us apart from the rest of the world, says Rhett Miller. And so when it came time for the Old 97 s to record the follow-up to the highest-charting album of their career, 2014 s Most Messed Up, producer Vance Powell brought up the idea of returning to Tornillo. We knew instantly that it was the perfect move, says Miller. The result is the eleven songs of Graveyard Whistling, the eleventh studio album from the Old 97 s.

Knowing that he wanted to consider as many options as possible, Miller handed over a huge pile of songs to the band; they whittled his thirty selections down to eleven. It grapples with spirituality and mortality, Rhett says. Our songs normally hide deeper meanings in the subtext, but they re more on the surface for this record. The trick the Old 97 s have held on to is to take a song that may have a darker theme and present it as something to be screamed along to in a club. The emotional range and musical scope of Graveyard Whistling also benefits from the contributions of some remarkable co-writers including Brandi Carlile, Caitlin Rose, Nicole Atkins, and Butch Walker.

There aren't more than a handful of bands in history who can claim to have an intact, unchanged line-up as they approach twenty-five years together. There is, of course, no real blueprint or rulebook for sustaining the kind of chemistry that Miller, Bethea, Hammond, and Peeples enjoy. We re just very lucky to be able to do this for a living. It's insane and beautiful and we never, ever take it for granted concludes Rhett.

1. I Don't Wanna Die In This Town 2. Bad Luck Charm3. All Who Wander4. Jesus Loves You5. Good With God6. She Hates Everybody7. Irish Whiskey Pretty Girls8. Nobody9. Drinkin' Song10. Turns Out I'm Trouble11. Those Were The Days

A Crow Left Of The Murder...

Double gatefold sets presented on 180-gram audiophile vinyl.

At the beginning of their career, Incubus was rightly lumped in with the legions of post-Korn alt metal/rap-rock bands swarming America in the latter days of the 20th century. But by their third album, 1999's Make Yourself, they had separated from the pack, as indicated by the presence of producer Scott Litt, best-known for his work with R.E.M. It signaled that the band was serious, and they began expanding their rap-metal template on that album and its follow-up, 2001's Morning View, completing their transition from juvenelia to maturity with 2003's Crow Left of the Murder. Switching from Litt to producer Brendan O'Brien, a man who has been with Pearl Jam longer than any of their drummers, Incubus has opted for a clean, crisp yet heavy sound which allows them to aggressively switch from crunching metallic riffs to jazzy prog interludes. It's an expansive musical vision charged with some righteous anger; although vocalist Brandon Boyd doesn't write explicit protests, there sure are enough allusions to social turbulence to make this the first politically aware alt metal album in many a year. This maturation is even more evident in the music, how the band actually swings on Zee Deveel, or how guitarist Michael Einzinger's jazz-influenced solos seem both carefully constructed and casually tossed off, or how Boyd's voice shifts from song to song (or during a song, as on the opening Megalomaniac, which sounds like a bizarre blend of Mr. Mister's Richard Page and John Lydon). All this maturation does mean that Incubus may shed some older fans, since the naked ambitions on this record are far removed from the earnest, angst-ridden earlier records, but so be it -- A Crow Left of the Murder... is far more interesting than any of their other records, or their peers'. At times, they may stretch themselves a little too far here, but the ambition is admirable and the achievements are tangible -- a real breakthrough for the band.

-AllMusic.com

LP11. Megalomaniac2. A Crow Left of the Murder3. Agoraphobia4. Talk Show on Mute5. Beware! Criminal6. Sick Sad Little World7. Pistola

Shifty Adventures In Nookie Wood

Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood is a title to set tongues wagging and minds wondering, but for an album that seems born of a return to John's youth it seems safely apt in its mischievousness.

After nearly 50 years of making music it's still freshly evident that Cale draws from a make believe world first imagined by his young self. Track title 'Mothra' pays homage to the Japanese monster from Godzilla movies. As a boy practicing scales in grey skied Welsh valleys such fantastical flights of fancy must have been reassuring of the path that was potentially about to unfold for him. Lyrics reveal even more explicitly earlier incarnations of Cale and in the same song we relive an encounter with a local bully, You see me running, you see me climb, reading my books and always trying, laughing and teasing and I love to play, dreaming my dreams are never far away.

Elsewhere Cale's doing what he does best, guiding listeners through the places, politics, and people of the day. A wide range of human experience is reflected and often it's for the listener to dig deeper to find what's being documented. Sometimes however part of the tapestry is pulled soberingly into focus; when listening to 'Scotland Yard' while the Leveson enquiry plays out, it's all too easy to recognize the guilty.

As a producer Cale has reached a new plateau on this record. At the albums most maximal, it feels like looking at a collection of precious stones. Myriads of differently coloured and textured surfaces carefully placed together, each finding their own space to beckon the ear. It's a blend of chaos and beauty in equal measure and a testament to the exploratory spirit at work, which ensures that as always, there's something new to the ears here.

Right Now (Speakers Corner)

A great deal has been said about Blues and Rock'n'Roll musicians being inspired to great things by folk music. But one hears little about those who work quietly in the background, far removed from dazzling light shows, power amps and fog machines, and who create new strains of tender plants from the roots of traditional folk, so to speak. One such person is Wizz Jones from south England. He can write songs, and he can sing - but it would be far too simple to describe him as a songwriter. His cultivated and versatile performance technique on the guitar bears witness to his personal aspiration for perfection on his instrument. With Jones all this culminates in highly original high-end folk: he's particularly laid-back in groovy numbers (Right Now, No More Time To Try), where the elastic and springy sound of the guitar is enhanced with chirping sitar and wavering bottleneck slides so typical of the times. Alongside these are the carefully re-worked traditional melodies (American Land), a 17th-century tune (Raven) where the singer plays 'call-and-response' with himself, and a solid 16-bar blues (Deep Water) in the early Chicago style. Particular attention should be paid to the numbers in which he collaborates with Alan Tunbridge and is fired by his genial ideas - specially recommended: Mary Go 'Round.

Musicians:

Wizz Jones (vocals, guitar)

Sandy Jones (banjo)

Pete Berryman (guitar)

Reanna Sutcliffe (piano, harpischord, vocals)

John Renbourn (sitar, harmonica)

Andy Fernbach (piano)

Sue Draheim (vocals)

Malcolm Pool (bass)

Ian Hoyle (drums)

Recording: 1972 by Colin Caldwell at Marquee Studios, London

Production: John Renbourn

About Speakers Corner

At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.

During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s - or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.

A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.

We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky"), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.

We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.

To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects - excluding the exception above - and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.

1. Which of Them You Love the Best 2. One Grain of Sand 3. City of the Angels 4. The Raven 5. Right Now 6. Find a Man for You Girl 7. American Land 8. No More Time to Try 9. Mary Go 'Round 10. Deep Water

Wizz Jones

$34.99

180 Gram Audiophile Virgin Imported Vinyl LP - SealedDiscontinued, Get one of the last 1 available!Buy Now

True Romance

Over the past few years, Charli has released a series of singles and mixtapes, toured the globe supporting the likes of Coldplay, Santigold, Sleigh Bells and Justice and garnered champions from practically every tastemaker blog and magazine on both sides of the Atlantic. She's had 2.5 million views on YouTube, 470k views of new video for 'You (Ha Ha Ha)' (in one month) and over 630k total plays on Soundcloud. It's hard to believe someone so young could achieve so much. Through it all her main focus has always been on making the best possible album she could. This was made possible by working with some fantastic collaborators who helped hone her vision for a dark, emotional pop record including Ariel Rechtshaid (Usher, Major Lazer, Solange), Patrik Berger (Lana del Rey, Robyn) as well as hotly tipped blog favourites Blood Diamonds and J£zus Millions.

As well as being an artist in her own right, Charli has written and featured on one of the biggest global breakthrough hits of 2012 for Icona Pop. I Love It created an absolute frenzy stateside, having blown up all over the world.

True Romance shares its title with an unbelievably well-cast 1993 movie written by Quentin Tarantino, who was reassembling cultural detritus way before mash-ups and microblogging. Charli XCX's approach to pop is similarly postmodern (how 90s does that sound?), pulling from moody 80s synth-pop, sassy turn-of-the-millennium girl groups, and state-of-the-art contemporary producers to create something distinctive and immediately memorable. She clearly understands the internet, having shared two original mixtapes and two influences mixtapes before her official full-length, but this carefully pruned set is no data dump. And there you'll see a glimmer of True Romance's most throwback aspect: its evident pop ambition, an overriding sense of an imagined mass audience for music that's radio-ready yet outsider-friendly. It's almost like Napster-- and the filler-crammed album sales model that preceded it-- never happened.

In fact, by the time Charli XCX was a teenage electro-house devotee, illegal file-sharing's early free-for-all had already given way to iTunes and other legal download services. Robyn had already released her self-titled comeback album. So it might be only natural that Charli XCX would keep the pre-bubble faith that people will pay for emotionally direct, bubblegum-catchy, yet stubbornly left-of-center songs about falling in and out of love. But the generous hooks on the previously released singles here, such as the gospel-kissed prechorus of the yearning Stay Away or the Santigold-savvy lilt of love-and-the-bomb brooder Nuclear Seasons, are extraordinarily welcome just the same. Even better are newer singles such as the gorgeously bitter You (Ha Ha Ha), which inhabits its cloud-rappy Gold Panda sample like they were made for each other, and the almost-as-gorgeously blissful What I Like, which recounts a still-young relationship with the cheeky frankness of Lily Allen or the Streets, and the sing-songy near-rapping of the Spice Girls.

The several songs on True Romance that hadn't previously surfaced in videos or other releases aren't quite as strong, but they're effective enough to suggest Charli XCX's best work might still be ahead of her. The Todd Rundgren-sampling So Far Away, with the sun-dappled lushness of the Avalanches, is a clear highlight; Charli XCX's vocals are usually plain-spoken, but the anguished break-up plea Set Me Free proves she can reach for Jessie Ware-like dramatics when appropriate. The pitch-shifting no one is forever intro added at the start of opener Nuclear Seasons probably should've been given its own track-- and later on the album it is, when the same backing vocal forms the base of the cloudy, broken-hearted Grins. Elsewhere, the haunted confession How Can I, while solid enough, is a reminder that Charli XCX's lyrics so far tend to fall relatively flat; when, on swooning finale Lock You Up, she sings, It hits me like a ton of bricks, she leaves the clichÉ untweaked.

And then there's Cloud Aura, a lovelorn, engagingly laid-back bit of groove that lets Grimes' Genesis video co-star Brooke Candy rap horribly about Chris Brown. Candy's guest verse previously appeared on 2012's uneven Super Ultra mixtape, and it was near-universally panned. It isn't any better now. But in an era when too many up-and-comers are all too eager to please, this stubborn refusal to back down displays another quality in short supply: genuine irreverence. The songwriting and production credits on True Romance include Usher's Climax co-conspirator Ariel Rechtshaid and I Love It collaborator Patrick Berger, among others, who also share some credit (and blame). But like 90s pop stars turned 10s pop sophisticates Justin Timberlake and BeyoncÉ, Charli XCX stamps her personality across the entire project, and True Romance suggests she'll be worth following for a while.- Marc Hogan, Pitchfork

Music For Dogs

There's a quote tucked into the recent documentary film about the iconic design duo Charles and Ray Eames, commenting on the symbiotic nature of Charles and Ray's marriage, their work life in Venice Beach, their home life not too far away, and their creative life: Work is art is life is work is art... It's a concept so simple a small child could dream it, yet it's one we tend to lose in the strange, abstract grind of modern life and modern ambition. For Gardens & Villa songwriters Chris Lynch and Adam Rasmussen, a return to this very harmonious relationship of art/work/life and a rediscovery of the DIY ethos that once defined the pair's formative creative years mark the defining thread of their head-turning new album, Music For Dogs. The revelation that we hear play out so inspiringly across Music For Dogs is one that came at a make-or-break moment for the band last year. Pushed to fall in line as an indie-pop act while their artistic interests lie as much in the avant-garde. Pushed deeper into debt just to keep their band alive. Pushed from within to leave the comfort zone of their longtime home base in Santa Barbara and set up a new HQ in Los Angeles. Lynch and Rasmussen responded by bucking the idea of art as a career and making art their very way of life. With a top-to-bottom renovation of a warehouse space in LA's Frogtown neighborhood lovingly dubbed The Space Program and shared with visual artists, designers, and creatives, the pair began to live and write music on their own terms, just as they'd done before their music was placed on the marketplace. Music For Dogs is a deeply personal album that pokes, prods, and even strangely celebrates the zeitgeist of music commerce, pleasure culture, technological advances and the new home they've found in Los Angeles. The New Age and Eastern Religion sentiments that rippled across their first two albums (2011's Gardens & Villa and 2014's Dunes) have been swapped out with a new sort of zen pop-Nihilsm. What's Nihilism anyway but Buddhism with a fuck-it attitude? They've found a way to live on the firing line, a way to actually harvest creative energy from our sad Internet tendencies, the uncertain future. My whole life fixation/See if we can make it underneath the radar, goes Lynch and Rasmussen's respective call-and-response on Fixations, a song about the beauty in bottoming out and then finding the false bottom. Lynch could mean living as a creative in the underground or living outside peripheral view of the NSA. Under the stewardship of visionary producer Jacob Portrait and with irreplaceable rhythm section Dusty Ineman (drums) and Shane McKillop (bass), Fixations - and a great deal of Music For Dogs - is really just Gardens & Villa doing what it has always done best. G&V creates Byzantine melodies and richly interwoven arrangements for synths, guitars and vocals that work incredibly well on a cerebral level, but wouldn't upset a 3 a.m. pool party either. The jaunty, jarring piano and bass that begin Everybody perfectly frame the song's anxiety-riddled themes of 21st Century voyeurism, surveillance and the turnstile of avatars intended to represent our true selves. Everybody wants the new you/No one cares who you are, Lynch sings in a repeating chorus before the band collapses into a lovely out of time mall piano breakdown, which itself drops effortlessly back into the jaunty verse section. And the speedball ripper Maximize Results that begins the record is perhaps G&V's most ecstatic, vulnerable moment laid to record to date. It alone is worth the price of admission.

Eonian (Bone & Black Swirl Vinyl) (Pre-Order)

Release Date: June 22, 2018*

Eerie shadows are lurking in the dark corners of spring 2018; the spirit that denies, a force able to distort our conception of space and time. Over seven years, deathlike silence has filled the halls of the world's biggest black metal forge, DIMMU BORGIR, whilst powers have been gathering to resurrect the band right in time for their 25th anniversary. Now they finally mark their return with a vicious work of art that can be defined as timeless in the truest sense of the word: »Eonian«.

Conceived in the heart of the Norwegian black metal scene in 1993, DIMMU BORGIR quickly broke free from the boundaries of the genre, daring to combine a traditional raven black sound with opulent symphonic orchestration. Soon they turned into pioneers of their field, forging groundbreaking albums such as »Enthrone Darkness Triumphant« (1997), »Spiritual Black Dimensions« (1999), or »Death Cult Armageddon« (2003), invading the entire world with headline tours and eventually turning into the most influential act of their genre after nine full-length studio releases. Seven years have passed since their latest manifesto »Abrahadabra«, they are now returning to rip apart the space-time continuum with »Eonian«.

From a musical point of view, the band explores their boundaries in every direction with this new record, with the black metal parts even rougher and darker than before, and the epic, orchestral moments pushed to their ultimate limits. This time DIMMU BORGIR were aiming for a more organic sound for their devilish offerings, and reached out to Jens Bogren, who engineered the 10 new tracks inside his Fascination Street studios. The cover artwork was designed in fascinating detail by Zbigniew M. Bielak.

The songwriting core of DIMMU BORGIR furthermore consists of charismatic vocalist Shagrath, as well as the string wizards Silenoz and Galder, but other familiar faces also emerge from the darkness: Drummer Daray and keyboarder Gerlioz are still part of the team, and Gaute Storaas helped with the choral arrangements for the majestic voices of the Schola Cantrum Choir.

The lyrical theme of the Norwegians' tenth studio work follows a philosophical concept, dealing with the illusion of time and Luciferian codes:

"Time, when not approaching it from the construct we're used to can't be defined and thus it is illusory", explains axemaster Silenoz. "There's only an 'eternal now', which the album title is already hinting at. When we travel between the worlds seen and unseen, the perception of time ceases to exist, it has no function. Our energy is our torch and our compass when we make rifts and pierce through our the veil - when we go beyond." Silenoz refuses to grant more information than that, hence why DIMMU BORGIR's albums have always been open for interpretation and felt somewhat like a dark room in which every listener believes to see something different in front of their light seeking eyes.

"»Eonian« represents the illusion of time, everything that is and always has been. For us, it also marks the 25th anniversary of DIMMU BORGIR and the album itself is a tribute to our own history and the Norwegian black metal history", adds Shagrath.

Since their debut album »For All Tid« from 1994, DIMMU BORGIR have always released their epic new works in regular intervals, but this time around, the Norwegians couldn't tame the beast of their creativity that quickly, and therefore they took the time it needed to slowly weave their collective ideas into these nine new tracks:

"Some of the songs on this album were written in 2012. All of us have our own pre-production studios and just write separately, without too much communication at first. Over a time period of one or two years we collect our ideas and then get together and try to get the best out of the material", says Shagrath. "Sometimes this can be quite challenging, because we have different tastes and opinions - but that makes it also more interesting for the listener, since we want to create music that makes you feel as if you don't know what's behind the next corner."

Silenoz agrees: "The main challenge is to hold back the beast. You're so into what you're doing that sometimes it's easy to forget that you have to approach the beast without waking it up right away, because you know you won't be able to control it. It's actually pointless to trick yourself to believe you can ever control art... It's like going into a lion's den with a rope tied around your waist in case you need to be pulled out real quick. Being our own producers also mean we have to step out of our own egos and look at our material from an 'outside' perspective. This is another challenging part of the songwriting process because you put so much of yourself into it - and then to start shaving off things, trim things down instead of adding - is a tough process. Letting go can sometimes be really hard but when we step out of ourselves and look into the mouth of the beast, only then we're able to distinguish what to feed it next."

Thus, both classic black metal invasions such as 'Lightbringer', but also highly symphonic charged anthems like 'Interdimensional Summit' gather on »Eonian«, with one of the band's personal favourites being the experimental, folkloristic 'Council of Wolves And Snakes'. Risking a look far beyond the horizon, this song proves that the band follows 'no formula, no absolute', as Silenoz vows, and shows that the path sometimes guides them to places they would have never expected to end up when they started their journey.

On the previous album, »Abrahadabra«, the Norwegians irritated some militant black metal elitists by appearing in opulent white / gray costumes. And although they chose a different appearance for »Eonian«, DIMMU BORGIR always keep new surprises in store:

"We're definitely a band that does not follow any set of 'rules', if any; we're out to break them - for sure. Not that it's a goal per se, it's just who we are. We knew the white/grey look would raise a few eyebrows but whatever we do, or not do, we'll end up raising eyebrows", Silenoz states and Shagrath adds: "The album feels like a rebirth, but also like a logical continuation. Our music comes naturally. We're not sitting down in a circle, thinking about what we could do next - it has to come with a flow and with whatever is in your mind at that time, it needs to be spontaneous and is exactly what we could do at that time. Each one of our releases was linked to a certain time period of our life."

After having released the live DVD »Forces Of The Northern Night« in spring 2017 which provided a monumental overview of the shows that DIMMU BORGIR had performed with a big orchestra and choir, the time is over in which fans needed to watch the band members on screen - hence now they are ready to storm the stages of the world again. The first headline slots at Europe's major festivals, such as Wacken and Hellfest, have already been confirmed, and further live plans are currently being forged for the second half of this year. The Lightbringers are back - and they've come to split apart the heavens:

"We obviously rely on our fans, if a band says they don't care - they're lying. We're definitely ready to work hard to convince the 'doubters', the 'dwellers ready to strike', that what we have to offer is still very much valid. A new generation of fans and listeners who come from a different 'time' than we do are out there now, not shy to let artists hear it! And we're not shy to let them hear what we've been up to!"

Manley Neo-Classic SE / PP 300B Amplifier

Have a question about this product? Please email ouraudio advisor or call 1-877-929-8729 with any questions or concerns regarding your equipment purchase.

Handcrafted in the USA

The wonderfully simple 300B directly heated triode is virtually Lee De Forest's very first evolutionary 3-element piece, comprising only filament, input grid and anode output. Brought to reliable perfection by Western Electric USA and later by Standard Telephones UK as the 4300B, the 300B was very much intended and widely used for telephony amplification. But audio enthusiasts of older times knew a good thing when they saw (heard!) it and the great love affair between the 300B and music began... and dwindled many years later as the American Western Electric 300B was taken out of production in the late 1980's making the genuine ones extremely valuable and, accordingly, very highly prized as collectors' pieces. With the Asian-driven passion and resultant revival of SINGLE ENDED topology the call for the 300B to be put back into production was too overwhelming for the Chinese factories to resist. The Russian and the re-start of USA manufacture of the genuine Western Electric original have further expanded the selection. Basic thermionic simplicity... directly-heated triodes... it is a drug for some, a religion for others...

With its decidedly (and studiedly) 'retro' physical proportions- very deep front-to-back dimensions with a narrow side-to-side width, this layout closely follows concepts of a bygone era, where the well-conceived intention was to keep the power supply as far as possible from the hum and noise susceptible octal input tubes. The output tubes themselves require careful distancing from the mains transformer and, of course, require pure DC on their filaments. Again, reverence to past times begs the use of vacuum tube rectification with its very gentle voltage rise-time. But to bring the performance up to modern demands, we use two rectifiers to enable the use of very substantial filter / reservoir capacitors... over 1300 microfarads in the B+ rail- much improved from the 4 or 8 microfarads utilized in the 1930's.

When several other manufacturers started selling single-ended amps with 5 to 9 watts of power, we understood subjectively and objectively the good part of the story: the superb mid range, the delicate detail, the inherent simplicity. The bad news was that there were almost no speakers efficient enough to help form a dynamically viable system. The worst news was that either these single-ended amps cost more than the condo and or they had specs that could only be read as a joke. As the triode fans increased, more efficient speakers became available and several fanatics began to dismiss push-pull as a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. We objected to such blanket generalities and stressed that the push-pull done right with truly phase-balanced transformers, quality parts throughout and well designed circuitry has proven to be a superb technique. We also enjoy single-ended topology but only when it is done right, mostly because we expect flat frequency response and low distortion out of an amplifier. We knew that we could achieve this in a properly conceived single-ended design. We chose to rise to the challenge of designing special circuitry that could be switched on the fly From 12 watts in parallel SINGLE-ENDED to 25 watts in PUSH-PULL which, we believe is unique in the industry.

The Output transformer (hand-wound in our own factory) is of complex design employing inordinately high primary inductance to compensate for the mandatory magnetic gap required for the uni-direction current and voltage flow of the single-ended output stage. Another factor in the single ended triode saga (currently enjoying a wide spread popularity) is demand for little (or sometimes zero) negative feedback. We at Manley Labs believe in the judicious or sensible amount of feedback to refine and maximize performance. Our Neo-Classic SE/PP300B gives you the choice in precision switched 1 dB steps to go from ZERO dB's to 10 dB's of negative feedback. Even with zero negative feedback, this amp is cleaner and flatter than any single-ended amp we know of.

One interesting aspect of negative feedback is it gives a higher damping factor. Conventional wisdom would have us think that the higher the damping factor, the better. Our experience is that the optimum damping factor is not infinity and that it depends on the speaker, the room. and the taste of the listener. In other words, the optimum is variability, and this we provide. This amp satisfies us as long time amplifier builders, amazes the critics in several well known magazines and is bound to satisfy you with the ability to fit into your system and your expectations. BUT REMEMBER PLEASE the overall facts of power ratings versus loudspeaker sensitivity and room size when electing to venture into lower power amplifiers (less than 50 watts) and especially when contemplating single-ended topology.

The Journey Man

"In my music," says Goldie, "is everything I've learned, everyone I've met, everything I've experienced." And it's been an incredible trip. The maverick innovator - who rewrote the future of the jungle scene with landmark releases that still sound like they were kidnapped from tomorrow - has a unique story to tell. From children's homes in the West Midlands through stints in New York and Miami as one of the UK's most celebrated exponents of graffiti art to rubbing shoulders with an exceptional list of musical collaborators including David Bowie, Noel Gallagher and KRS-One, Goldie has defiantly, definitively, done it his own way. "I'm an alchemist," he likes to insist. "I practice the dark arts of messing with the form of something solid."

Though marriage and his passion for bikram yoga have, he says, proved a calming influence, these days he's just as full of inspired, out-there ideas as he was back in 1993 when he did his first cover interview for the rave magazine Generator. "My music is about fallout," he said then, "about the damage that has been done to the system." Today, in the office of one of his London-based contacts, the ideas are still sparking. "Drum'n'bass has done to electronic music what graffiti has done to the art world," he muses, before launching into a rapid-fire synthesis of art history, dancefloor evolution and his own hyperactive brand of self-actualization, which loosely translates as: "Why do something ordinary when you can do something extraordinary?"

It sums up the reason why, in 1994, music critic Simon Reynolds famously observed: "Goldie revolutionized jungle not once but three times. First, there was Terminator (pioneering the use of time stretching), then Angel (fusing Diane Charlemagne's live vocal with David Byrne/Brian Eno samples to prove that hardcore could be more conventionally musical), now there's Timeless, a 22-minute hardcore symphony." Each of these were moments that shaped the musical fabric of the decade and beyond, presaging Goldie's transition from the underground rave scene into the world of bona fide A- list superstars.

But it didn't start out like that. The boy who would become Goldie was born Clifford Price on 19 September 1965, just as The Rolling Stones hit the top of the charts with Satisfaction. His dad Clement, originally from Jamaica, had been plying his trade as a foundryman in Leeds. His mum Margaret, who had been born in Glasgow, was a popular singer in the pubs and clubs of the West Midlands. Barely more than a toddler, Goldie was just three when she placed him into foster care (though she kept his younger brother Melvin). He still remembers, he says, the day the social workers came to take him away.

Over the next 15 years, he bounced between a series of foster homes and local government institutions around the Walsall area. His eclectic musical taste was forged, he reckons, in those same local authority homes listening to the sonic tangle of other teenagers' record collections. "In one room," he says, "a kid would be playing Steel Pulse while through the wall someone else had a Japan record on and another guy would be spinning Human League." On rare visits to see his dad, he'd lie sprawled over the living room couch, listening to Jazz FM, marveling at the lavishly-tooled '80s productions of Miles Davis, Pat Metheny, David Sanborn and Michael Franks, adding further layers to his complex musicography.

Already developing the irresistible urge to excel that has marked his inimitable musical career, Goldie's first love was roller-hockey. He earned a place as goalkeeper in England's national squad before the lure of music overtook the lure of sport. After discovering electro and hip hop, he grew his hair - the "goldilocks" that won him his nickname - and joined a breakdance crew called the B-Boys in nearby Wolverhampton. He also discovered graffiti. "They called me 'the spray can king of the Midlands'," he says proudly. His talent was undeniable, bringing him to the attention not only of Britain's Arts Council but to Dick Fontaine, producer of a Channel 4 TV documentary on graffiti. Fontaine's 1987 film Bombin' captured a visit to the UK by New York artist Brim Fuentes. Brim met Goldie and his B-Boys crew in Wolverhampton's Heathtown before heading a dozen miles away to Birmingham's Handsworth, where the producer filmed the aftermath of rioting that had left four dead, 35 injured and dozens of stores burned out. Several months later, Fontaine reversed the process and took Goldie to New York, introducing him to hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa. For Goldie, on his first trip abroad, never mind his first trip over the Atlantic, the Big Apple was love at first sight. Back in Britain, he begged, borrowed and saved until he had enough to fund a return trip to the Bronx.

"I started painting the trains and getting involved on the streets," he says, remembering his total immersion in what was still, at that point, an emerging culture. Art and music as symbiotic technologies. Rubbing shoulders with the Big Apple's best graffiti artists, his own distinctive style was accelerated and enriched. A move to Miami followed. He worked in the flea markets, he says, "painting trucks for drug dealers" and developing a sideline in gold jewelry that included the distinctive grills that became a trademark on his return to the UK. The magical properties of shaping, working and bending precious metals to his will - as close to alchemy as the modern world gets - became an analogue for the way he prefers to operate in the studio, chasing quicksilver dreams, mercury-fast rivulets of imagination into impossibly lush, breakbeat concertos. Back in Britain, Goldie found himself seduced by the sweetheart of the rave. Though it took him eight attempts to get entry into the club, at London's Rage in 1991 he marveled at the alternate sonic worlds being forged by Fabio and Grooverider behind the decks. "It really flipped me out," he remembers. Soon he found himself in the orbit of Dego McFarlane and Mark Clair. Their label Reinforced was in the vanguard of breakbeat, issuing astonishing records that stripped out boundaries and limits while setting the tone for the scene's sense of adventure. At first, he helped out doing artwork and a bit of A&R. But soon he was in Reinforced's Internal Affairs studio watching intently as Mark and Dego recorded tracks like Cookin' Up Ya Brain and Journey From The Light. "I was watching what they could do," says Goldie, "trying to gauge the possibilities of the technology." Soon he was getting involved. "I remember one session we did that lasted over three days," he says, "just experimenting, pushing the technology to its limits. We'd come up with mad ideas and then try to create them. We were sampling from ourselves and then resampling, twisting sounds around and pushing them into all sorts of places."

What followed was a series of inspired break-driven releases such as Killa Muffin, Dark Rider and Menace. Then Terminator, with its writhing drum loop, dropped and suddenly Goldie's name was on everyone's lips. He followed up with the equally revolutionary Angel, tilting the axis towards the lush, trippy textures that made 1995's debut album Timeless the drum'n'bass scene's first platinum album. Incredibly, given what was happening elsewhere in the scene at the time, the recording of the album's epic title track began as far back as 1993, when most other producers were still focused on the original sonic tropes of hardcore rave.

Timeless was a masterpiece - of production, of songwriting, of sonic perfection and breakbeat futurism. Even today, it still sounds as astonishingly new and inspired as it did back on those early pre-release cassettes circulated by London Records in the early months of 1995 when Goldie was still living on the 18th floor of a North London tower block.

By then, Goldie had already set up his own record label - Metalheadz - with his friends the DJ duo Kemistry and Storm. Along with studio collaborator, Rob Playford's Moving Shadow and LTJ Bukem's Looking Good imprint, Metalheadz helped to define drum'n'bass as a distinct musical format with singles by J Majik, Asylum and Goldie himself. Still bursting with energy, he then launched a legendary club night, Metalheadz Sunday Sessions, at London's Blue Note. The scene's best producers - among them revolutionary artists like Photek, Source Direct, Peshay and Dillinja - would compete to have their latest recordings debuted at the club and the scene's faithful came from far and wide to hear the best tunes before anyone else. "Those nights at the Blue Note were magical," he recalls. "It was an underground phenomenon that became an institution." David Bowie, who was making the drum'n'bass-influenced album Earthling at the time, fell in love with the place. "I remember popping out to take a break from all the madness inside the club," says Goldie. "He was outside having a cigarette, a bit of a breather. We chatted for a bit, looked at each other, grinned and then plunged back into it all. It was just that kind of place."

Goldie is one of only a handful of artists ever to co-write with Bowie - on the track Truth from the drum'n'bass pioneer's second album Saturnz Return. Released in 1998, the album also saw his vision become more expansive (the opening track, Mother, clocked in at just over an hour). The album's collaborative approach included guest spots from rap legend KRS-One, Sex Pistols manager and all-around provocateur Malcolm McLaren, super-producer Trevor Horn and Oasis main man Noel Gallagher (on the single Temper Temper).

Fuelled by the limitless creativity that has been the hallmark of his career to date, Goldie next turned to acting. He reunited with Bowie in Andrew Goth's 1999 thriller Everybody Loves Sunshine then took the part of Bullion in the 1999 James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough. Other box office smashes - including Guy Ritchie's crime heist caper Snatch - followed before he joined the cast of BBC1 soap opera EastEnders, playing the gangster Angel Hudson.

A series of blockbuster TV appearances - on shows such as Maestro (where he learned to conduct an orchestra), Classic Goldie (which saw him perform his own orchestral composition at the Royal Albert Hall in the summer of 2009) and Goldie's Band: By Royal Appointment.

The orchestral training proved useful. In 2014, he translated his original vision for Timeless into the stunning Timeless (Sine Tempore). Performed live with the Heritage Orchestra at the Wilderness Festival to suitably rapturous acclaim, the performance was repeated the following year as part of the Meltdown Festival at London's Royal Festival Hall. In between, he found time to unveil Fragments Of Gold, a piece inspired by medieval chants that he performed live in Glasgow Cathedral.

Drum'n'bass, of course, has remained a consistent passion, both through his Metalheadz label and his releases under the Rufige Kru moniker (2007's Malice In Wonderland and 2009's Memoirs Of An Afterlife). "Technologically," he says, "breakbeat has managed to surpass all other forms of music to date. There isn't a recording engineer alive who can tell me there's any other form of music that is more complex than the music we make." Goldie has also recently announced he will be releasing a brand new double album 'The Journey Man' this year. The album comprises two parts, 16 brand new tracks in total, all written and produced by Goldie. It also features a host of collaborators handpicked by Goldie to help realize his vision for the album.

"I often look at music not so much as a producer but like a director. You're drawing together engineers, performers and arrangers to create something special, something magical. It's like alchemy. The notes, the music, the lyrics, they're all in my head and each element has to be communicated and brought to life to create the finished track. I'm always inspired by great movie directors - people like Stanley Kubrick and PT Anderson - and, if you think about it, it's quite a similar approach. They start off with a vision and then they use that vision to deploy the actors and the cameramen and the editors in order to create the finished film."

Collaborators on 'The Journey Man' album include vocalist and songwriter Natalie Duncan, who was discovered when chosen in the three-part BBC series 'Goldie's Band By Royal Appointment' and later provided the vocals for Goldie's 2012 single 'Freedom'. Other featured vocalists on the album include Terri Walker, Tyler Lee Daly, Natalie Williams, JosÉ James, Naomi Pryor as well as Goldie's wife, Mika Wassenaar Price.

'The Journey Man' will be released through Cooking Vinyl and Goldie's own record label, Metalheadz.

Goldie's love affair with painting has remained consistent too and he continues to exhibit visual work that's just as dazzling as his sonic output. Beginning with Night Writers, the 1986 exhibition at Wolverhampton's art gallery that introduced Goldie and his Supreme Graffiti Team to the British Arts Council, his shows have defined a unique aesthetic that's all his own. And through them all, from 1987's Rockin' The City in Birmingham (where he exhibited alongside Massive Attack's Robert Del Naja) and the 1988 Crucial Creators exhibition in Walsall to more recent gallery events like 2007's Love Over Gold and 2012's Athleticizm collection (including portraits of London Olympics stars such as Victoria Pendleton, Tom Daley and Jessica Ennis), runs a consistent thread of energy, experimentalism and boundary-pushing. His 2013 collection, Lost Tribes, an innovative series of pieces fusing Goldie's style with the artistic expression of the ancient peoples of Africa, Asia and America was, he says, "my most important breakthrough".

And for the kid who lay awake, gazing at the stars, through the window of a children's home, growing up has brought some surprises. In 2012, he was selected as one of the BBC's New Elizabethans, 60 people - ranging from David Hockney to Roald Dahl, David Bowie and Tim Berners-Lee - who have helped shape British culture during the reign of Elizabeth II. Four years later, he was awarded the MBE in the Queen's New Year Honours. It's acceptance, of course, on a grand scale. But at heart, he's still the gatecrasher, amped-up on ideas, buzzing on nothing but love, hope and the certainty that, while his way might not be the easy way, it's very definitely the path of a true artist.

Homesick

Before digging into the steely, handcrafted technoisms of Homesick, you need toknow a few things about Charles Du , the Bay Area artist behind Matrixxman.Perhaps most importantly, he is a dedicated futurist-quick to name Google'sdirector of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, as a major personal inspiration, and prone tocontemplating artificial intelligence and a true post-corporeal reality. He's also avoracious information junkie, soaking up government conspiracies andcontemporary science-fiction like a proper X-Files fanatic. These cultural referencepoints are as integral to the background of Homesick as Detroit, Chicago, andBerlin's musical legacies. Across the record's versatile tracklist, Matrixxman usesthe language of machines and dancefloors like a hungry pulp novelist, weavingtogether his divergent narratives and characters under one sprawling dystopiansky.

If you listened to house and techno in 2014, you've undoubtedly heard the nameMatrixxman. The guy has been on a prolific tear since debuting his project in 2013,having issued no fewer than 12 cold-ass futuristic releases and taken hisgenre-blurring DJ sets around the world in under two years. But his story reachesmuch further into the past: back to being a drum & bass-obsessed teenager in thelate '90s, back to when Du 's best friend changed his life with a Juan Atkins mixCD in 2001, back to producing for hotly tipped MCs like Le1f, Ty Dolla Sign, and YG.Matrixxman is already a venerable pro with workmanlike constitution, to say theleast, and yet his debut album has only just materialized.

My obsession with the darker sides of humanity's exploits gone awry is secondaryto the more important matter at heart: evolutionary transcendence, Matrixxmanexplains. And his focus on cybernetic themes shines through the music. EmergentAI, interplanetary travel, neuroenhancement drugs, incredible opulencejuxtaposed with abject poverty, leaving physical form and existing as data-Homesickdistills the concepts into thick acid lines, brawny 909 patterns, tonal contrasts,dynamic aesthetics, and viscous pads steeped in digital ephemera. It begins withNecronomicon, a massive black cloud of noxious ambience looming over ourstory, and ends on the astral mysticism of Earth Like Conditions. Yes, there is anarc built into Homesick, and the sci-fi epic it illustrates seizes your undividedattention.

Even the tracklist speaks volumes to the record's music and narrative-from theenhanced motorik systems of Augmented and Network Failure's cognitivedissonance, to the dark hedonism in Opium Den and the drum machine violencethat drives Switchblade. As Matrixxman says himself, The titles correlate todistinct, separate scenes. And those visuals just about come alive on tracks likePackard Plant-a whirring, windswept homage to the desolate Detroitlandmark-or the album's haunted and distant centerpiece, Annika's Theme. Du is quick to share Annika's identity: She's an incredibly gifted neuroscientist,pursuing cutting-edge research in fields that will have a profound impact onhumanity. But what exactly she accomplishes and where she goes is unexplained.Homesick outlines the cues needed to follow along, careful to leave room for us tofill in the details.

Matrixxman uses his debut album to evoke visions of a not-too-distant-future withmusic made both for the dancefloor and the early morning zone-outs that follow.These are the real world applications of Homesick, though Du comes to it all froman entirely di erent mindset. We will have the technological capability to fullymap out a human brain in its entirety within 30 years, he starts. The implicationsof such a possibility are deep and far reaching. We will be crossing a rubicontowards a new phase in human consciousness. I am one person that is prepared totake that step. Once you emerge on the other side of Homesick, it seems possiblethat Matrixxman already has.

Saves The Day

Saves the Day is dead. Long live Saves the Day.

Of course, with the departure of long-time lead guitarist Dave Soloway prior to the release of Daybreak in 2009, that may have been the moment that marked the final days of an early 2000s emo powerhouse. But even that album felt more like a body of work you could have expected from Chris Conley and company in the past.

The band's newest self-titled release marks a well-documented departure from the days of Stay What You Are, In Reverie, and, hell, even Sound the Alarm. Whereas previous entries in the band's catalogue have dealt with the anxious, even nerve-wracking realities of the young and socially awkward, Saves the Day instead starts off on a power-pop riff and hardly strays from it (not that anyone's complaining.)

The first two tracks, "Remember" and "In the In Between," set the tone for the rest of the LP. The fast-paced, poppy tunes are care-free ventures, something missing from Conley's writing since In Reverie.

Oddly enough, Saves the Day sounds more like the bands that have fondly proclaimed that Can't Slow Down, Through Being Cool and Stay What You Are inspired their own sounds. That sentiment becomes even more pronounced as the album plays on.

"Beyond All of Time" slows things down a bit before "Ain't No Kind of Love" kicks the tempo back up a bit. Both tracks flow into each other nicely. And although neither stands out on its own, the songs reinforce the mood of the album.

"Lucky Number" plays much the same, fitting into the album nicely as a piece of the puzzle, but without offering much on its own merit.

The song "Xenophobic Left Hook" by title alone demonstrates that Conley hasn't yet lost his lyrical style. But the sound that accompanies his vocals is drastically different than ever before and it can be directly attributed to the band's ever-changing lineup.

"The Tide of Our Times" is one of the album's truly outstanding tracks. It's catchy. It's fast. It's less than two-and-a-half minutes long and it's emblematic of everything Saves the Day does right in this album.

"Supernova" is, lyrically, the closest we might come to a traditional Conley track. The imagery and metaphors are wonderfully woven throughout the ballad.

"Verona" picks the pace back up, leading nicely into another of the album's best tracks: "Ring Pop." The pace is fast and the lyrics recall carefree days when a ring pop may have sufficed as a symbol of courtship. It's the essence of what makes some of Conley's best music, harkening to a past with the sentimentality ramped up to 11.

"Stand in the Stands" is, by far, the most up-beat and optimistic album closer Saves the Day has ever composed. Standing in stark contrast to even the band's sunnier albums and closers like "Firefly" and "Tomorrow Too Late," the track starts with a bouncy melody and doesn't let up for the nearly four minutes it plays out.

Although Daybreak was the first album where Conley was the last of the band's founding members left, it carried hints of Sound the Alarm and Under the Boards, primarily because of those three albums' conceptual ties (They were designed as a trilogy that started with 2006's Sound the Alarm).

If Conley's way with words is what drew you to the band, this will be right up your alley. Saves the Day may not be the band you remember, but Conley's presence maintains the only lyrical and moody consistency that we really need.

- Eder Campuzano (Daily Emerald)

1. Remember2. In The In Between3. Beyond All Of Time4. Ain't No Kind Of Love5. Lucky Number6. Xenophobic Blind Left Hook7. The Tide Of Our Times8. Supernova9. Verona10. Ring Pop11. Stand In The Stars

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